


Not Staying

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [14]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 14:38:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7056607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Greek Myth, Hades + any, "You're not staying?!"</p><p>Daniel Jackson's always been bad at following orders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Staying

Daniel opened his eyes. He was on his back - no pain from the staff blast, apparently - and staring at what looked like the night sky, if the night sky were filled of ghosts instead of stars. He rolled over and pushed himself up on his knees. He was on a riverbank in a world that was perpetually twilight, no horizon in sight. There was a small dock a few feet away, where an ancient man in a dusty chiton was piloting a boat. People of all shape, size, and description were boarding the boat, and before they did, they each handed him payment. Two coins.

Daniel blinked. "Impossible," he said.

He was in the underworld. Hades. About to cross the River Styx. The old man at the boat was Acheron.

Daniel patted himself down. He didn't have any coins.

"Boy!" Acheron hollered. "Are you coming or not?" The boat was almost full.

Daniel approached cautiously. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't have payment."

Acheron, who'd automatically held out a hand for the two coins, blinked at him in puzzlement. "What?"

"I don't have any coins," Daniel said. "I was murdered, and I don't think anyone bothered to bury me properly –"

"Everyone has payment," Acheron said. "No matter how they die."

Daniel shrugged. "Well, I don't."

Acheron tugged on his beard thoughtfully. Then he sighed. "Fine, then." And he bowed his head, prayed.

An instant later, shadows coalesced, formed, blue flames flickered, and the black-clad man who appeared with a circlet of ice on his brow and a scepter in hand had to be none other than Hades himself.

Daniel was beside himself with glee. He was real! Gods were real! Only Ra wasn't quite how Daniel had imagined him, Ra wasn't a real god. He was an alien posing as a god.

"What's the problem?" Hades asked.

Acheron lifted his chin at Daniel. "He's got no payment."

"No payment?" Hades echoed.

"I really don't," Daniel said. He turned his pockets inside out for emphasis.

And then he heard a strange humming sound, like the thrumming of a machine. And even though the world was was wide as the sky and as deep as the river, it was also as small as the inside of a box. A sarcophagus. Daniel could see traces of gold glimmering through the image of the ghostly sky.

"I don't think I'm staying," he said.

Hades raised his eyebrows. "You're not staying?"

Daniel shook his head. "No. I don't think so."

"That's impossible," Hades spat. "That's –"

Daniel woke up in a sarcophagus. It was all he remembered after being hit by that staff blast.

*

The second time Daniel awoke in the underworld, he remembered everything. Not only his mortal life, but his first time there. He was barely on his feet before Acheron was hollering at him.

"You! Get over here. Last boat for a while, my boy. Don't want to get caught with inferi hanging around, do you?"

Daniel patted himself down again. He was wearing his BDU's and gear and had a lot of pockets to check. "I don't have any payment."

"No payment? That's –" Acheron narrowed his eyes. " _You_ again _._ " He bowed his head and murmured, and Hades appeared in a flash of black lightning.

He caught Daniel's chin and forced his head up. "What is the meaning of this?" He turned Daniel this way and that, peering at him. Daniel half-expected the man to squeeze his jaw and examine his teeth.

"I don't know," Daniel said. "It was another staff blast, though. I know other people have died permanently from them, but maybe I'm...immune?"

"No," Hades said. "No one is immune."

"This is kind of surreal, though," Daniel said.

"How so?"

"Well, _you're_ real."

"Of course I am."

"The other gods I've met haven't been."

"They're impostors pretending to be gods. True gods," Hades said. "But you're distracting me. How is it you have no fare?"

"Maybe it means I won't be staying this time either," Daniel said.

"I wouldn't bet on it." Hades smirked, but then the world began to flicker like a reflection in a pool of water into which someone had dropped a stone, and Daniel was lying on his back among trees.

That was all he remembered after the staff blast.

*

Acheron started to yell at Daniel before he even opened his eyes. "You again! I'm not even going to bother asking for the fare. I'll let his Lordship deal with you."

Daniel stood up and dusted himself off. Hades arrived on a chariot drawn by half a dozen jet-black night mares. He tugged on the reins and the mares halted the chariot mid-air. Hades descended on several storm clouds before dropping to the ground beside Daniel. He prowled a circle around Daniel, poked him a few times.

"You don't look like a hero," he said. "Or a demigod."

"I'm just an archaeologist," Daniel said.

"I take it you're not staying this time either."

"Nope."

"Let me guess, staff blast and sarcophagus?"

Daniel nodded. "It's becoming a bit of a trend, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is." Hades rummaged in his black chiton, came up with a traveling chess set. "Fancy a game?"

"I'm not sure how much time I have," Daniel said.

Hades plopped down on the ground. "Humor me. You can even be white."

Daniel sat down opposite him. "All right."

Turned out, before he woke up, he had enough time to win three games in a row.

*

Daniel flailed upright, the scream that had caught in his throat finally coming loose.

"Let me guess," Hades said. He was munching on an apple. "Another staff blast?"

"Rock slide," Daniel said.

Hades winced. "Ouch."

"How long do you think I've got?"

"It's different every time," Hades said.

And the insides of a sarcophagus began to bleed through reality.

*

Hades was waiting for Daniel when he arrived. "How are things in the mortal realm?"

Daniel shrugged. "Mortal-y."

"Twenty languages and at least three PhD's and that's all you can come up with?" Hades was flipping through what looked like an issue of People magazine.

"Have you been doing research on me?"

"A guy comes in and out of my realm like you do, and a god like me gets curious," Hades said.

Daniel considered for a moment. "Fair enough."

"What was it this time?"

"Alien tech made me sick. I flat-lined. Pretty sure they'll revive me soon," Daniel said.

Hades glanced at his empty wrist. "Time runs different between here and there."

"So I've noticed. Fancy another game of chess?"

Hades grimaced. "No." He flipped the magazine around for Daniel to see. "But what was Angelina thinking, wearing that dress to the Golden Globes?"

Daniel groaned in disbelief. "Really?"

"Really," Hades said, and fluttered his fingers, and Daniel awoke in the SGC infirmary.

*

Daniel didn't go to Hades after he died the next time, didn't go to the banks of the River Styx so Acheron could shake a fist at him for his continued lack of payment. But he did swing by Olympus when Hades and Persephone were helping Zeus celebrate the birth of yet another bastard demigod (Hera was sulking on the other side of the ballroom).

"Really, Daniel?" Hades asked, without stopping dancing with his lovely wife. "You went all glowy on me? You owe me at least three chess rematches."

"I'll be back to visit, I promise," Daniel said. "But I have to go. Ascended orientation and all."

"Have fun with that," Hades muttered "It's not all it's cracked up to be."

It wasn't, and Daniel played - and won - many games of chess in his year among the ghostly stars. Sometimes he checked in with his team under cover of playing more chess with Hades. When he showed up again to cross through the underworld to the mortal realm to help with the battle of Anubis, Hades wasn't waiting on the banks of the River Styx with his usual picnic basket of things Daniel couldn't eat and his travel chess set. Oma Desala was standing beside him, arms crossed, disapproving.

"Sorry." Hades shrugged but looked utterly unapologetic. "Couldn't lie for you."

"You mean wouldn't," Daniel said.

"Po-tay-to, po-tah-to."

The world started to shimmer.

"Just so you know," Hades said, "this is the last time you can come through here without payment."

*

Daniel was buck-naked when he landed on the banks of the River Styx.

Hades sighed and said, "Okay, _this_ is the last time."

And then Daniel was trying to cover himself with a flag in the SGC.

*

When Daniel next stepped onto the bank of the River Styx, he was old and gray and carrying two coins in his hand.


End file.
